{"id":29864,"date":"2017-03-09T13:30:23","date_gmt":"2017-03-09T21:30:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/?p=29864"},"modified":"2017-03-09T13:30:23","modified_gmt":"2017-03-09T21:30:23","slug":"abject-failure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/2017\/03\/09\/abject-failure\/","title":{"rendered":"Abject failure"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

No, not really an abject failure. So don’t jump in and tell me not to beat up on myself. I’m not<\/em> beating up on myself.<\/p>\n

This was another experiment, only partially successful. I was aiming to work on creating cast shadows — a tricky business I’ve gone out of my way to avoid. This was only a learning experience, and partial success is fine.<\/p>\n

If you feel slight discomfort looking at this but can’t pin it down, it’s because the sun is shining from two different directions. And no, this isn’t a beach in some binary solar system (nice try, folks). The cairn and the background are located in different times of day — the cairn in late afternoon, the dunes in early afternoon. I had a reference photo for four of the rocks in the cairn; the rest is what I got by winging it. Still, I set out to work on cast shadows and there they are.<\/p>\n

So where does “abject failure” come in? This piece reminded me why painting requires so much more confidence than writing. In writing, a first draft may suck. But at any moment, you can take any sentence, paragraph, page, or passage, and polish it until it shines. You know if you can do that with one sentence, you can do that with all. You can show yourself what it’s going to look like when its done.<\/p>\n

Art? Not so. At least not in my limited experience. No getting around it; with painting there are stages — many stages, most<\/em> of the stages — where the whole thing looks absolutely ghastly. And there’s nothing you can do but keep working it in hopes it’ll eventually resolve into something good. Even if you pause to perfect one portion, that’s no guarantee you won’t completely botch the rest. <\/p>\n

Or maybe it’s just a matter of practicing until you know what you’re doing. There are GOOD artists around here who probably don’t think that way. That’s only my experience.<\/p>\n

But setting out to create something beautiful and spending most of the process looking at uuuuuggggggggggly is disconcerting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

No, not really an abject failure. So don’t jump in and tell me not to beat up on myself. I’m not beating up on myself. This was another experiment, only partially successful. I was aiming to work on creating cast shadows — a tricky business I’ve gone out of my way to avoid. This was only a learning experience, and partial success is fine. If you feel slight discomfort looking at this but can’t pin it down, it’s because the sun is shining from two different directions. And no, this isn’t a beach in some binary solar system (nice try,…<\/p>\n

Continue readingAbject failure<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29864","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arts-and-aesthetics","category-mind-and-spirit","ratio-natural","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29864","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29864"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29864\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29874,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29864\/revisions\/29874"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29864"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29864"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29864"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}